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Trump Sketch Among Rare Presidential Relics in Auction

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions has a bevy of rare presidential relics available for auction this week, including works of art created by President John F. Kennedy and President Donald Trump. (Published Monday, Nov. 27, 2017)

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions has a bevy of rare presidential relics available for auction this week, including works of art created by President John F. Kennedy and President Donald Trump.

The Trump work is a sketch of the New York City skyline, made in Sharpie. The President donated the drawing to St. Francis Food Pantries and Shelters organization in New York in 2005 for a charity auction.

At the time, the sketch sold for $6,000. It is expected to sell for $15,000 or more at Heritage's Americana and Political auction on Saturday, Dec. 2. Bidding on the doodle was at $8,000 as of Monday morning.

"Nobody could have envisioned back then that Donald Trump would become President," said Don Ackerman, Consignment Director at Heritage Auctions. “So now all of a sudden you have something that was worth X number of dollars [in 2005] that is worth a whole lot more now that he became president.”

"President Trump generates a whole lot of publicity on a daily basis or an hourly basis, and if someone has something like this and they want to sell it, now is the right time to sell,” Ackerman said.

A rare oil on canvas painting completed in 1955 by President John F. Kennedy, when he was a senator of Massachusetts, is also up for auction. The colorful artwork consists of a group of waterfront homes and is believed to be a coastal town in the South of France, according to a Heritage Auctions news release.

Kennedy's niece, Victoria Gifford Kennedy received the artwork from John F. Kennedy’s brother, Robert Francis Kennedy and his wife Ethel after she married their son Michael.

In a note which accompanied the artwork, Ethel wrote to Victoria: "I'm delighted that 25 years later, you’re still enjoying President Kennedy’s painting which I gave to you and Michael for your wedding."

Bidding on Kennedy's painting reached $42,000 by Monday morning. It is expected to fetch at least $50,000.

Other items that are expected to fetch high sums include one of the earliest photographs ever taken of an American president, the bugle that sounded Taps during the funeral for President Abraham Lincoln and a series of handprints made of President Franklin and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.

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The bugle which sounded taps over the body of slain President Abraham Lincoln following his assassination will likely go for more than $50,000, according to Heritage Auctions.

“It is a really an evocative item and it is one of a kind and really it evokes images of that day in Washington, D.C. when Lincoln was assassinated,” Ackerman said.

A rare daguerreotype image of President John Quincy Adams, the first president to have been photographed, is also expected to sell for more than $50,000, according to Heritage Auctions.